


Phosphorescent

by 23Murasaki



Series: (re)Written!Verse [10]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: All of Giles's Doomed Friends, Backstory, Christmas Fluff, Gen, Only Sad Because of Context, Rated Entirely For Ripper's Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-25 23:49:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13223802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/23Murasaki/pseuds/23Murasaki
Summary: It's almost Christmastime in London, 1974, and all of Diedre's friends are morons. She loves them anyway.(Or: The author has a lot of feelings about characters who don't actually appear on this show, and it's only a little late for Christmas fic. This is technically from (re)Written!Verse but you really don't need the context of the rest of the series for it. )





	Phosphorescent

It’s cold, it’s gray, the generator’s on the fritz again, and Ripper is yelling. Again. It’s days like this that Diedre has to remind herself that she really does love her boys. Really. Deep down. 

“Can you pull your head out of your arse for a minute, Rips?” Randall snaps. Ripper’s head pretty much lives up his arse, so Diedre personally thinks that it’s an impossible request. 

“Yeah, Ripper, have some Christmas spirit,” says Ethan, who’s on Randall’s lap and wearing Randall’s shirt and is probably the reason for all the yelling, because he always is. Ripper gets around three times more obnoxious when Ethan’s involved, and Ripper’s obnoxious enough normally. Punching Ethan in the face won’t help, she thinks, but god if isn’t a tempting proposition. 

“Fuck you and your Christmas spirit!” Ripper yells, throwing up his hands. “We don’t even have a bloody tree!”

“Yeah, okay,” says Randall, who is mostly immune to Ethan-induced madness and therefore Diedre’s favorite. “But we’ve got booze and bootleg translations of the Necronomicon, and…” He glances sideways as Diedre for help.

“Two boxes of mistletoe,” she says. Randall grins. 

“And two boxes of mistletoe. That’s festive, right?” Ripper glares at him at him wordlessly.

“Well, I think it’s festive,” says Dierdre, who doesn’t think it’s festive at all but doesn’t really think she and her boys have any place celebrating anything other than seasonal snogging anyway. “Ethan, luv, help me unpack some?” Ethan, thankfully, doesn’t put up a fight and detaches himself from Randall. 

“Ooh, are we decorating?” he asks as he drifts over to her. Diedre’s urge to punch him is rapidly turning into a urge to fix his godawful hair, which is a sort of Ethan-induced madness in and of itself. 

“Yep,” she says, shoving the open box at him. “Festively. Come on.”

“But Ripper–“ Ethan starts. Ripper is currently getting in Randall’s face about stars, something else, and the Winter Solstice. Diedre grabs Ethan by the arm and drags him out. 

“Fuck Ripper. We’re decorating.” 

They put up three mistletoes before Ethan manages to pin one in his own hair, drape himself over her shoulders like an overgrown cat, and singsong something about murder into her ear. 

“Who’s getting murdered, luv?” she asks. 

“Shining Baldr,” Ethan says, very seriously. “Struck through the heart with a mistletoe spear.”

“Charming,” she says. “Don’t think these are long enough to sharpen, though, so we should be good.” Ethan snuggles against her, which would work a lot better if they weren’t both standing up.

“Should we have a Christmas tree? Ripper wants a Christmas tree.” She is way too sober for Shining Baldr and Christmas trees. 

“Poor little rich boy can get one himself,” she grumbles. “Seriously. We’re pressed for food and he wants a bloody tree.”

“It would be pretty,” says Ethan. “We could…. there’s a spell makes things phosphoresce.”

“Foss-what?”

“Phosphoresce. To emit light without emitting heat.” He pulls away and murmurs something she can’t quite hear, and a soft white glow fills the room. “Diedre, Diedre look! Like this, see?” The mistletoe in his hair is glowing, each little berry like a cold-white lightbulb. “Phosphorescence.”

“Yeah, okay,” she says, because she loves her boys and she does love Ethan, deep down, no matter how much chaos he sows in his wake. “That’s wicked cool.” The light fades, and Ethan giggles.

“Isn’t it pretty?” he asks, but before she can answer his smile fades. “I can’t make it last. I wish I could. We could shine, couldn’t we? We’d be Brilliant.”

“We’d blind people,” says Diedre, who’s been told in the past that she’s way too practically-minded. 

“Bugger people,” says Ethan, pouting, and he looks so ridiculous that Diedre can’t help laughing. 

“Oh come on, where’s your Christmas spirit?” she teases. Ethan sticks out his tongue, but just then there’s a resounding crash and slam from the room they’d left Ripper in. 

“–An’ you can shove it up your arse, you malodorous shithead!” Ripper yells. If the audibility of it is anything to go by, he’s taken down both the door and the quieting spell Diedre bought off that Traveller woman last month. Arsehole. 

“Oi! Simmer down over there!” she yells. “We need this place standing!”

“It doesn’t even have a bloody tree!” Ripper yells back as he stumbles into view with a busted lip and a look of pure rage on his face. 

“Oh for pity’s sake,” she mutters, because is he really still on about the damn tree? 

“Say that to my face!” Ripper snarls, and Diedre grits her teeth and thinks Christmas and reminds herself that sometimes Ripper isn’t an absolute disaster and anyway Randall likes having him around and she really, really shouldn't pick a fistfight over this.

“Ripper! Look, it’s phosphorescent,” says Ethan, who looks like he’s about to keel over from the combined effects of the spells it takes to make mistletoe glow and float as well as whatever combination of drugs he’s on today.

“I can’t see what it is,” Ripper says. “Give it here.”

“It’s mistletoe,” says Ethan, and kisses Ripper on the forehead. “Festive, see?” Ripper goes pink and mutters something incoherent about traditions.

————

They don’t get a tree, but Tom and Randall find one of those free-standing hat-racks and Ethan stops hovering mistletoe in Ripper’s face for long enough to find tinsel and ribbons and things, and Diedre and Philip can finagle ornaments out of cans and other junk. The end result is probably not the sort of festive Ripper gets at home, but it’s something. Diedre’s not sure what, exactly, but it’s something. 

“It’s perfect,” says Ethan with that sort of overly intense sincerity that makes everyone around him laugh. 

“It’s hideous,” says Philip. 

“DIY ethics,” says Ethan. Philip shoves him, but only halfheartedly. 

“The true spirit of Christmas, that,” says Randall, looping an arm around Diedre’s shoulders. She looks up at him sideways and thinks that he’s the nicest of the lot. She loves her boys, but she really does love him most. And maybe he knows, because he pulls her closer and doesn’t let go. 

————

By Christmas Day there’s a whole assortment of presents under the decorated hat-rack, and she’s caught Ripper full on sobbing like baby about it. He threatens to tear her guts out if she tells anyone, but she wouldn't anyway. It’s sort of nice. The whole thing is sort of nice, and it is all Ripper’s fault so she sort of owes him. 

The presents are silly and small and mostly ridiculous, but she loves every single one and Ripper cries again and Randall hugs everyone and she thinks maybe all kinds of madness are forgotten because for a moment they stop dicking around and sit there quietly drinking stolen wine and wearing half their presents. Beside them, the decorated hat-rack shifts, shines, and begins to phosphoresce to a smattering of applause. There’s sleet falling outside cracked windows, but they have all four of their space heaters in the one room and all their blankets and Ripper’s stupid quilt and she’s warm with Randall’s arm around her, and she thinks maybe they can stay like this forever. 

Maybe this really can last.

**Author's Note:**

> Author's notes in order:  
> 1) This was gonna be cute but I made myself sad  
> 2) Yes, I like Ethan far more than I should  
> 3) Yes, it's absolutely THAT Necronomicon I'm talking about


End file.
